Boulder linked to grassland preservation efforts far and near

The Nature Conservancy at work in Patagonia, and with Patagonia

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To some Boulderites, Patagonia is just another trendy downtown outdoors-wear shop.

But it's also the name of a massive region at the southern end of South America, shared by both Argentina and Chile, where a new strategy of grassland restoration and management has shown results sufficiently promising that it is now being applied on the eastern plains of Colorado.

A man representing a link between work in both countries is Chris Pague, lead scientist for The Nature Conservancy in Colorado, which has its office at 2424 Spruce St. in Boulder.

Pague, a Virginia native now living in Johnstown, has traveled primarily to Argentina, but also to Chile, numerous times in recent years for The Nature Conservancy. There, he works with ranchers to help repair -- where possible -- the effects of a century's worth of overgrazing on 20 million acres of Patagonia's iconic grasslands.

Nearly 90 percent of the grassland in southern Argentina is privately owned, and most of this region is used for grazing sheep.

"These guys are still using practices that were developed in the their daddies' time, and their daddies' daddies' time, and now they are finding out that these grasslands have been slowly losing, all of this time," Pague said.

"We think grazing is a perfectly natural thing in grasslands. What we haven't considered before is, what we call the triple-bottom-line: How do you make this work ecologically, financially and so that the people working the land are thriving?"

In encouraging ranchers here -- or in any country -- to modify their practices, Pague has found that the people working the land "have to be happy out there; they have to be fulfilling their dreams, just like I am in my job."

The strategy Pague has coached in Patagonia, the same he is bringing home to Colorado, is centered around planning so that grass is used -- and then allowed to totally regenerate before it is used again. That is done through adjusting the number of livestock that are grazing at a given time, limiting the amount of time the same area is grazed, and controlling the space where grazing occurs.

Working in concert with the South American sheep ranchers network Ovis XXI and Patagonia Inc., Pague has helped make sufficient inroads in Patagonia with the introduction of a sustainable land management practice that now, for the first time, the clothing company is now sourcing merino wool from its namesake region.

Pague has also allied in his work there with Carlos Fernandez, an attorney who is project manager for the Nature Conservancy's Patagonian Grasslands of Argentina Conservation Project.

"The ranchers are hopeful, something they haven't been in a long time, because of these changes in practice and that they can get rewarded for actually doing them," Pague said. "It's not just the right thing, but there's actually a financial reward. They are hopeful; they really think this is going to work."

And now The Nature Conservancy is putting the same practices to work much closer to home.

The Conservancy in 1998 acquired the 14,700-acre Fox Ranch in northeastern Colorado, southwest of Wray, and currently leases grazing rights there to a single family ranching operation, for a pilot project that employs many of the same conservation and monitoring practices as those developed in Patagonia.

Through his work with the Colorado Natural Heritage Program several years ago, Pague said it was determined that of Colorado's several diverse eco-systems, its grasslands had lost more of their natural character and suffered displacement of their native systems than any other. This was attributed to the building of cities, suburban sprawl, construction of other infrastructure, and also the conversion of the land's uses for things such as food production.

Now, the practices pioneered in Patagonia are being employed on the Fox Ranch property. A representative of the family holding the lease through The Nature Conservancy was not available for comment.

"It's a learning center where we can practice this and see if some of it is more applicable elsewhere," Pague said. "How do we consider all of the conservation needs, all of the agricultural needs and the financial needs and social needs and come up with the optimal plan, that's really sustainable -- sustainable for the wildlife, the people and the plants?"

The conservation movement, as it relates to grasslands, according to Pague, represents an evolution from "grazing bad, get rid of it, to, grazing can be bad, to, how are we going to live together and achieve all these different outcomes?"

From Patagonia, to Colorado and beyond, the work in search of an answer continues.

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